Tech —

Dell releases powerful, well-supported Linux Ultrabook

"Project Sputnik" aims to be your fellow traveler by focusing on "DevOps."

In our recent ZaReason UltraLap 430 review, Ars alum Ryan Paul lamented that even though putting Linux on laptops is easier today than ever, it's still not perfect. Some things (particularly components like trackpads and Wi-Fi chips) take some fiddling to get working. Major OEMs aren't yet putting forth the same concerted effort to build and support laptops with Linux as they are their more high-margin servers.

However, Dell is changing that. Earlier this year, they announced a pilot program, "Project Sputnik," intended to produce a bona fide, developer-focused Linux laptop using their popular XPS-13 Ultrabook as base hardware. The program turned out to be a rousing success, and this morning Dell officially unveiled the results of that pilot project: the Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition.

The XPS 13 used in the Developer Edition features a number of upgrades over the pilot Project Sputnik hardware, including an Intel i5 or i7 Ivy Bridge CPU and 8GB of RAM (the pilot hardware used Sandy Bridge CPUs and had 4GB of RAM). The Developer Edition also comes with a 256 GB SATA III SSD, and retains the pilot version's 1366x768 display resolution. The launch hardware costs $1,549 and includes one year of Dell's "ProSupport." Additional phone support options aren't yet available.

The laptop comes with Ubuntu Linux 12.04 LTS plus a few additions. Dell worked closely with Canonical and the various peripheral manufacturers to ensure that well-written, feature-complete drivers are available for all of the laptop's hardware. Out of the box the laptop will just work. They also have their own PPA if you want to pull down the patches separately, either to reload the laptop or to use on a different machine.

The hardware is solid, but the software is the fun part. The Project Sputnik team cooked up two open source tools which come preloaded on the laptop, aimed at automating setting up development environments and making deployment easier: the Profile Tool and the Cloud Launcher.

To find out more, Ars spent some time with Barton George, Web Vertical Director at Dell and one of the biggest driving forces behind Project Sputnik. The Profile Tool, described here on George's blog, is an application that facilitates the installation of preconfigured development tools, referred to as "profiles." It's originally the idea of Charles Lowell, one of the early Project Sputnik "alpha cosmonauts" (the awesome appellation for those who helped test the project in its early stages). The Profile Tool is almost a "reverse cloud" deployment utility, pulling distributed resources down from the cloud to your local workstation.

For example, if you want to develop a specific type of Ruby application, you can use Profile Tool to locate a preconfigured Ruby "profile" on Github that matches what you want to do, then clone that profile to your computer. Profiles can contain all the fiddly bits necessary to actually begin working—libraries, whole frameworks, dependencies, or anything else. Developer Edition users can build and share their own profiles for others to use. Someone who has painstakingly built the perfect environment for developing Node.js and Redis applications, for example, can quickly create a profile out of his setup and share it. Others who clone the profile will wind up with the same set of libraries, binaries, packages, dotfiles, and anything else included in the profile—all neatly contained in a sandbox in their home directory.

George even suggests there might be an opportunity for "signature profiles," where high-profile developers can package and share their specific working environments. Forget being able to play basketball like Michael Jordan by wearing his shoes—what if you could code like Matt Mullenweg by cloning his development environment?

The other tool, the Cloud Launcher, is designed to let developers quickly and easily deploy projects to a cloud provider. It leans on Ubuntu's Juju cloud service deployment tool, which we touched on in our Ubuntu 12.10 review. Cloud Launcher is intended to let developers model an environment on the Developer Edition laptop, then click a button and have that environment automatically duplicated to a production location at a cloud service provider like Amazon EC2. Hawk-eyed readers will notice the Cloud Launcher GitHub repo is currently empty, but George assures us as the application matures and branches away from Juju the code will appear in the repo.

Both the Profile Tool and the Cloud Launcher are centered around the increasingly popular "DevOps" approach to development, which tries to remove barriers between developers and IT operations personnel. Building applications with a focus on DevOps means linking things together with an eye toward making it easy for developers to go from thinking things to prototyping them to deploying them. This angle is particularly important for a device like the Developer Edition laptop and Project Sputnik in general. The intended customers are cloud-minded developers, and gaining their trust and acceptance is critical for the product's success.

I could hear the pride in George's voice as he described Project Sputnik and the XPS 13 Developer Edition laptop, though he quickly points back at the user community. The response to the project has been overwhelmingly positive, unlike some past efforts. The pent-up desire for a well done, well supported Linux developer laptop is clearly there, and George notes that the Linux community is friendly and responsive if approached honestly. "As long as you're open and honest and transparent," he said, "people are very supportive of you. You just never want to over-promise!"

All of the additions Dell is bringing to Ubuntu 12.04 are available for free (as in beer). Dell and Canonical are working with the hardware vendors (like trackpad manufacturer Cypress) to make sure that the code they have written for the Developer Edition laptop makes it upstream so others can benefit. The Cloud Launcher and Profile Tool live on Github, and their base operating system modifications are available in the Project Sputnik PPA. The XPS 13 Developer Edition laptop goes on sale today, directly from Dell.

Update: This article originally stated that the source code to the Cypress trackpad wasn't publicly available. Ars was contacted by Kamal Mostafa, the kernel maintainer for Project Sputnik, who pointed out that not only is the code available in the PPA, but that it was submitted upstream several weeks ago and is being reviewed. Further, he stressed that all of the Project Sputnik kernel components are fully open-source. We've modified the article accordingly. Thanks, Kamal!

Lee Hutchinson
Lee is the Senior Technology Editor at Ars and oversees gadget, automotive, IT, and culture content. He also knows stuff about enterprise storage, security, and manned space flight. Lee is based in Houston, TX. Emaillee.hutchinson@arstechnica.com//Twitter@Lee_Ars

Dell drops support faster than anyone on their products that aren't their normal laptops and desktops at the first sign of a downturn. Feedback is good? Good. I'm still skeptical Dell will have this in a year. Please prove me wrong Dell!

Why does it cost $1500 when it only has a 1366x768 screen? Does it have like a 512 GB SSD drive? Because anything lower than that, and the price doesn't make sense. It's like they're trying to charge a premium for a device with a *free* and open source OS.

EDIT: I see it has a 256 GB SSD drive. Great. So they ARE charging a premium for the fact that it's using a FREE operating system. And I agree that at this point a laptop like that, especially for developers, is a non-starter with that resolution. Doesn't Dell do any market prediction at all? Or do they always want to be the LAST ones to adopt something?

*sigh* I agree about the resolution. That's pretty sad. My X220 has the same resolution and it's not beautiful to look at it. While its not terrible, I would have loved to see a higher res to really showcase the Linux desktop.

Lee, your coverage these days makes me happy. You are officially my favorite writer on Ars.

XTF wrote:

Is Ubuntu the only distro that'd work? What if I prefer Debian or Mint?

I agree, while its great that Ubuntu ships on it, I've been driven away from Ubuntu by Dash/Unity. I recently found Mint and I'm loving it. A few niggles that aren't as smooth as I'd like, but overall I love the Cinnamon and Mate interfaces. Plus using the version based on Ubuntu means all those commands I have ingrained into my subconscious still work. I would expect though this laptop and the drivers written with Canonical's help would work fairly easily with Mint.

I'll join in ranting about the pathetic screen. 1366x768, and probably TN too, for $1500?? are you serious? I know how to use an OS so don't need that crap, just give me a decent screen, and improved trackpad drivers!

Why haven't these patches been integrated upstream?Is Ubuntu the only distro that'd work? What if I prefer Debian or Mint?

According to Barton George, they're trying. Unfortunately, Canonical and Dell aren't the only entities involved. As has been the case many, many times before, the hardware vendors aren't always keen on sharing, and it's hard to convince some companies that the FOSS model works and that it won't infect them with some kind of "open source cancer" that will prevent them from making money.

1366x768 .. Sigh.. Edit: We have tablets at a ridiculous 2560x1600, but this.. C'mon

Yea. I'm pretty disappointed by this too. Dell sells a laptop with a 12.5" touchscreen that's 1080p for less money too. I was sorta looking forward to this but with that screen res at $1500 it's a no go.

Why haven't these patches been integrated upstream?Is Ubuntu the only distro that'd work? What if I prefer Debian or Mint?

Looking at the Launchpad description, most of the fixes are backported from the 3.6 kernel. There seems to be some code for the non-standard trackpad, but I wouldn't worry. It's mostly just Ubuntu with a few version control systems and admin tools installed.

It's like the device was hamstrung at birth: give it good software, but slap it into a line (XPS or Inspiron) that has a short shelf life and hobble it with a low-resolution screen and sell it for more money. I can see why (those panels are cheap and it keeps costs down) but it's an unfortunate choice. You might as well opt for their 12" flip-book and hope.

It would be nicer, I think, to see a Latitude with 1920x1080 or 1200. Mind you, Dell (nor Lenovo, with the T-Series) doesn't have a high-res Latitude that isn't a 15" brick. Or get a MacBook...

I mean, I can understand why the price is so high.. all that work with Canonical, developing the "Developer Tools", some pretty decent hardware, and the Dell business support is frankly awesome.. but for this price? I'm sure it's a good PC, but really $1,600 worth?

I think people typically think of PCs as expensive because of the Windows license.. it would have been nice to see that savings here, as well as a resolution greater than my 11" mini Dell laptop. A step in the right direction, I suppose?

I can't see how this is attractive to Linux/Unix fans of which I am one. If size, weight, and looks aren't a concern then https://www.system76.com/laptops/model/gazp8 is pretty good. Otherwise, I have a 2012 Macbook Air that I picked up for 1300 with 8 GB RAM and 1440x900. Along with http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/ I don't miss Ubuntu/Linux. You do pay the Apple tax but more importantly forgo the MS tax

1366x768 .. Sigh.. Edit: We have tablets at a ridiculous 2560x1600, but this.. C'mon

Hell,there are phones with better displays nowadays too.. And to be honest for this pricetag, I'd just grab a Zenbook Prime for the 1080p display (and discrete graphics) and bite the bullet with driver support.

Really? $1600? I spend my entire day in the command line doing "DevOps". I prefer minimal tools. I don't need fancy Dell Cloud magic. I don't want a shiny IDE with bells and whistles. Ubuntu + VIM + GIT + Open source deployment tools is all I need. The longer I work in this industry the more I simplify my rig.

I'll join in ranting about the pathetic screen. 1366x768, and probably TN too, for $1500?? are you serious? I know how to use an OS so don't need that crap, just give me a decent screen, and improved trackpad drivers!

Those drivers will go into the meanstream kernel, so atleast that is an improvement.

Not sure why so much negative comments about this ultrabook. It's solid offering and a step in the right direction.

Yes, it has screen resolution that could be higher. But this is portable machine, nobody will do any serious development on 13" screen regardless of the resolution. You would hook it up to a nice external monitor and real keyboard for serious work and have laptop for out of the office work or demos.

It is also cheaper than comparable MacBook Air with 8GB RAM and 256 GB SSD.

In terms of quality, I don't consider Dell a bad choice, pretty much every laptop and desktop machine I purchased over the last 10 years was Dell (Vostro, XPS and Optiplex lines) and never had any issues with any machine.

Aside from the resolution, this looks great. I have been running Linux (Mint 13 & 14) on several laptops (Dell Vostro and Lenovo E420s) without any serious issues, but having first party support for drivers is always nice. I may very well purchase this machine if I cannot get my POS lenovo fixed.

I have a dell xps 15z with a 1080p screen. At 15" its almost too small to read comfortably in a desk setup. On the desk, I have a full sized keyboard and mouse and a second monitor. With it 1-2 feet away, its a bit tough to read whats on the laptop screen. Maybe I am just getting old, but 1080p on a 13" screen would be WAY too small.